


18 April 1800

by SirJosephBanksFRS



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 11:37:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1106359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirJosephBanksFRS/pseuds/SirJosephBanksFRS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stephen Maturin sits at St. Anna’s and takes stock of his distressed circumstances and how he ended up penniless in Mahón.</p>
            </blockquote>





	18 April 1800

Stephen Maturin lowered himself from the wall that separated St. Anna’s from the abutting villa to the ground, his pockets full of oranges from the branches of the trees that grew along the other side of the wall. He had picked all the most ripened of the semi-ripened fruit that he could reach without actually committing criminal trespass and he sat on the ground against the wall, his hands trembling and peeled one and then took a large bite. Whilst it was not exactly sweet, it was not as sour as the fruit he had pilfered the night before and he devoured it rapidly, even as he knew his guts would gripe in protest. Underripe oranges, uncured ripe olives off the trees of Mahón and raw fungi were the only solid food he had consumed in the last three days.

Coming to Minorca had seemed such a providential prospect six months ago when Father Burke had introduced him to kindly old Mr. Browne as the perfect physician to attend him and his phthisis in the Mediterranean, as Stephen was fluent in Catalan and knew Minorca well. Mr. Browne was a man of very comfortable estate; the agreements were made and papers drawn up. Stephen was most grateful to Brendan for agreeing to keep for him the few possessions from his rooms on Mackie Place he wished to retain so that he might take his leave with the little else he possessed and quit Dublin, leave her grey dreariness which matched his own morose state and his deep melancholy of the last year and three months, since Mona’s death. He was also relieved to put more space between himself and the increasingly fragmented, toxic and chaotic remains of the United Irishmen, as well as Mona’s father, Sir Walter Blake, whom Stephen thought probably not given under normal circumstance to wilfully acting the informer, but grief made men lash out in unpredictable ways. Sir Walter's resentment of Stephen, his previous threat and his reaction to the sudden loss of his daughter might result in an anonymous letter to Dublin Castle, naming Stephen as a conspirator. Not that Stephen cared so very much as to whether his life ended or not, but he despised Major Sirr and the rest of them and had no desire to die on the gallows.

He took out the miniature of Mona that Pamela had sent him after her death, that Lord Edward had commissioned as a future wedding gift for his cousin, Pamela having been the matchmaker. He looked at it. Mona was so very beautiful. He could still smell her perfume in his dreams, could still hear her voice and see her eyes, so clear and bright: flashing with indignation at a dishonest dairyman, sparkling when she laughed in delight and now, she was gone forever, never to be his wife. He still dreamt of her very frequently and in his dreams, he was happy, they were happy; they were together, they danced at Frescati House to the applause of Lord Edward and Pamela, reliving those very, very happy days in the fall of 1797. Then he awoke in the ruined apse of St. Damian's, hungry and alone again.

He had virtually no personal effects with him save this miniature. A week ago, a priest at St. Anna's had been good enough to agree to hold his trunk and cello for one month when he had shamefully and disgracefully been forced to give his landlord the slip. The priest had given him a very small amount of money but now all he had were the clothes on his back, his wig and spectacles in a very small bag and this tiny portrait of Mona in his waistcoat pocket as he walked the streets of Mahon like a feral dog looking for something to eat. He had not a farthing to his name. He could write his godfather, Don Ramon in Ullastret, so very close to Mahón, but he did not even have the money for pen and paper nor for the post. And he was far too proud, truth be told, to write a letter begging Ramon to send him fifty _reales_ , begging as though he were still a boy at Sant Cugat's wanting money for Carnival, though Ramon would deny him nothing and double the amount and send him stacks of books as well. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what a miserable state of affairs, he thought bitterly. This day was the nadir of his life. He could not even stand to walk on the same side of the street past the door of Joselito's and he crossed the street for the shame of the weeks of watered down hot chocolate for which he had not paid. At first, Joselito himself had told Stephen it was nothing, but like every other merchant in Mahón, he seemed to have decided Stephen Maturin y Domanova was perhaps not a physician, instead perhaps a not very accomplished sharp, a meagre seedy customer.

He could come into some quick funds at the card table, he well knew and was saving it as his very last ace to be played when he became so desperate that he was willing to risk being blackguarded all over Minorca by angry losers at cards who would claim that he cheated them and then he would be forced to go out repeatedly, until he had spilt so much blood that none would dare accuse him openly. The British naval officers he had seen were a garrulous lot, well fed and given to deep play with plenty of funds that he could easily win from them with the right introduction from the right person. But then as well, he had no stake now to ante --it would mean selling his violoncello to lay his hands upon the cash, no easy feat in a relatively provincial town like Mahón.

Reflecting on his current penury, he wondered how had he ever been so mad or so foolish or so naïve as to think he would ever be able to successfully marry the daughter of a baronet -- not for the marital alliance, but at all, even if she chose to be disowned and disinherited. He bitterly reproached himself for the ten thousandth time. Though aged and sick, Sir Walter Blake was a very rich and very powerful man in Ireland. Uprising or no Uprising, how would he, Stephen Maturin, a bastard with no fortune to his name, have ever accomplished marrying a very beautiful young woman whose father was exceedingly wealthy, a peer, and a former member of the Irish Parliament? Her love for him and her wish to marry him had been as irrelevant to reality as her prior wish to enter the convent. He only now truly realised fully that he would never be able to marry any woman of any social standing comparable to that of his parents, friends or family, that his bastardy was an insurmountable impediment to any match of any young lady of quality and family. Only a woman whose own position in society was completely marginal or worse would ever consent to be his wife and he could not imagine ever meeting a woman of great beauty and spirit like Mona of whom that would ever be true. He would be alone forever. In the extremely unlikely event that it ever did happen, he would not lose his opportunity by vacillating for one second over a proposal.

Why had he squandered their time together working for the Rising, he thought miserably. If only he had convinced her to leave with him back in September of 1797 and had taken her to Barcelona and married her immediately. Even if her life had not been spared from the consumption (an unlikely outcome at that juncture), they would have at least not have had the sacrament they both so desperately wanted denied to them. The memories of their lovemaking were almost more bittersweet than he could bear. Before he had deduced that she had a lethal case of consumption, they had made love on one occasion, the night she had come to tell him of the death of his cousin, Lord Edward. Sure, he had made love to her in the weeks afterwards, but the joy that should have been engendered in him in so doing was replaced with terrible grief he had hidden from her. They had coupled perhaps ten times in the four weeks before she died. Every single instance, Stephen had experienced the deepest and most agonising melancholy afterwards. His beautiful sweetheart, his first true love, his darling Mona was dying whilst he held her, slipping away from him with every second that ticked by and he was so despondent that he wondered if all Maturin men were cursed like the Atreides but in matters of love for some ancestor's long forgotten sin. All he had wanted was to marry her and to make love to her as his wife and he never would. Brendan had been most sympathetic to him, telling him what he did with her was no sin; it was comfort for a poor, dying girl who would not live to see her twenty-third birthday, he need not confess it at all. He was risking his life by even kissing her and he had not cared an iota because he had wished he might die when she did. Sitting here at St. Anna's, tears filled his eyes, listening to the church bells toll. Then he closed his eyes and prayed to the Blessed Mother to ask for her intercession with God to forgive him for such blasphemous thoughts and for guidance for his now hopelessly lost self.

"Is that you, Doctor Maturin y Domanova?" Stephen heard a man say in Catalan. He opened his eyes and looked up. It was Don Jaume Martinez, landlord to Stephen's landlord. He knew Martinez, had gone to a handful of social occasions attended by him. Don Jaume was the wealthiest and most influential resident of Minorca by far. He was also a transparent opportunist, a man who did not scruple to worry about ethics when it came to feathering his own nest and one with little or no fellow-feeling for Minorcans. He was disliked intensely by many members of the _Confederacio_ , who openly said he was untrustworthy for he would do anything for the right price. He was therefore neither trusted nor liked by many people. Stephen smiled wanly, hoping the gentleman would find it beneath himself to dun Stephen for his back rent or that Martinez had not yet heard somehow that the tenant of his tenant had run out in arrears.

"Good afternoon to you, Don Jaume." Stephen said, rising and bowing, wiping his sticky fingers on the back of his breeches, underneath the tails of his coat. Martinez bowed in response.

"Good afternoon, Doctor. Will you be at the Governor's residence this evening at eight thirty?"

"What is happening at the Governor's residence tonight?"

"Music. The _anglès commandante_ \-- his lady will be playing the harp with a quartet. Go as my guest, I know you enjoy music very much." Stephen looked at him doubtfully. "There should be quite a spread there -- not _anglès_ food, _gràcies a Déu_." Martinez said, patting his own considerable gut and chuckling.

"Thank you, that is most kind of you." Stephen said. His stomach had accepted the invitation even as he was so irritable he could barely suffer Don Jaume's small talk now. The acid of the orange burned in his throat. Don Jaume was apparently in a hurry in any case and he nodded to Stephen and bowed.

"Go with God, Doctor and may no new thing arise."


End file.
